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How to take the Crown with a platoon

It has been bugging my for a while now that a organized force cant take a base from unorganized zerg defense so i have thought about it and this is how it is done. Not saying we have the organization for this but im pretty sure this would work.

Gal 2-3-4 will drop at the same time
Gal 2: 11 Engineers Objective, 6 will drop ammo and repair 5 will help clear remaining pads.
Gal 3: 11 Medics objective, 6 will heal and revive, 5 will help clear
Gal 4: 11 Infiltrators with SMG's, 4 Will hack all remaining active AA turrets and man them. Rest will avoid combat and stay alive at all cost

Gal pilots will best be light assaults as they are likely to miss the drop point and will need to get back to the landing pad after they have made sure there squad has dropped.

The 2 bursters are to stay on the roof until sundie is deployed in garage
Once all pads are clear they shouldn't be any more than 1-2 squads up there. Max's take point clearing down to the AV turrets where 4 of the 7 remaining hackers must hack them and man them.

It is vitally important that no one goes on A as all this will do will bring even more troops to the tower.

Once floor 2 is secure we get the hard part the garage.

They will most likely be a sundie in here so the 2-3 of combat engineers will charge this and mine it while the other 2 will mine both entrances. The 6 repair engies must stay with the max's at all times.

All remaining Infiltrators must hack all terms then pull at least 2-3 sundies and deploy in the veh bay then man the guns. Pref Furys with NV.

All sundies MUST have full mine guard duel furys\bulldogs and AMS

This is where squads will take on duties instead of class's

Alpha: 2 AI max's, 1 comet, 4 engineers, 4 medics "1 LA from gal pilot" will hold the north side of the sundies so veh door.

Charlie: 2AI: 1 comet, 3 engineers 3 Medics, "1 la from pilot" 2 infiltrators that pulled sundies "8 of the 11 are manning turrets" the 2 infs will swap out to a medics and a engineer to support the squad, which will hold the 2 west infantry doors.

Delta: 9 infiltrators, 2 bursters and a LA, Once sundies are deployed by this squad at least 2-3 must be pulled all infiltrators must swap to engineers to repair and maintain sundies. By this time all hacked turrets should be destroyed. The sundies furys main goals are to provide supports and cover all doors with 1 trained on the east doors at all times.

Then you just hold till the zerg joins you.

This requires a MMORPG level of organization that i dont really think we can achieve this level of organization was not unusual for Raids as complicated as this in Age of conan where a 24 man group would fight one boss and if one guy died you wiped but that was hard core raiders and most people play this game for fun.

Im not saying this level of organization is possible in this game but it should be.

Anyway this has been on my mind all week hope you enjoy the reed

I would love to be able to say as a outfit, what the crown yea we could take that with 1 platoon IF we wanted to.

but that's just me all ways aim for the toughest challenge in a game and the crown is that atm

Edit: Also once you have cleared the air pads if you have 1 platoon and 1 squad you could bring in 6 libs to support as all the AA would be removed

sounds like a reasonable plan, but you'd need to be well organised to pull it off. Also theres a lot that could go wrong. Given the galaxy above them and the number of maxes being dropped it would be reasonably obvious to the zerg what is going on. You could still get overwhelmed. If you did it at the same time as your zerg was making a suicide attack even if you didn't succeed, you might allow the other attack to get in.

I most often see the crown fall, when it gets isolated and the zerg are drawn off to defend other places, then it is less difficult. But if you want to take it at peak time, in one sharp assualt, your plan looks a lot better than trying to run across the damn bridge.

Hopefully by overloading on medics and engineers and people having a role and knowing what there job is you could avoid most people dieing\staying dead to long. The hardest part would be clearing the Airpads then the veh bay. you would need to be fast so you could get down there before the defensive zerg responds

Pulling off an attack like this is definitely a challenge, but I would enjoy giving it a try on a strategic night. It could be attempted multiple times as the cooldowns for vehicles and maxes will have reset after 20 minutes. Set a maximum number of attempts, for example three, to make people focus and avoid too much stress.

That's actually not a bad plan. I'd love to try it out. Like you said Cortosis, it'll be hard to get this kind of organization working. But if it did (and I think we could make it work) we'd have a good shot at taking the Crown.

I'm quite honestly getting REALLY sick of the Crown, and how it stops all fighting on Indar. So count me in if you want to try this.

Thats the thing something like this would require practice, people would need to feel comfortable in there roles and know exactly what is expected of them. Its no good getting to the veh bay and all your infiltrators forget to pull sundies and run off into the night chasing kills

Looks like a nice plan, and it might work. From how I look at it, as I play NC a lot and not Vanu, speed is of most importance. So I would remove most of the maxes (keep 2 or so) and go for heavies. Also remove half of the engineers for heavies as well. Don,t stay on the landing pads. focus on the ground 2 lvl's. Take the tower before they can react, so drop (lets assume all heavy) just pushes forward for the ground floor. The others clean up behind them and revive all dead members. Maybe regroup on the second floor if the ground lvl is to heavy populated.

Thats how I would do it, but then again I would not plan on keeping the tower for long. It's the distraction the serg needs to push up. If you would be able to call away half of the defenders, that should be enough for a zerg to push up the path and get a foothold.

The concept is great, it has always seemed like a super organised group should be able to take the crown in one fell swoop, the plan you laid out seems pretty feasible.

Pulling it off would be something else, but as you point out, it requires no more organisation than a hardmode raid. Perhaps the VR training area would help to plan it/practice roles? Even so, would really need absolutely everyone to be in the zone for it. Worth a try? Personally I like the heavy use of maxes. They are so much more durable than heavies, gives you enough time to keep them up with all the support.

It might work, or just be fun, but it needs a lot of work, and some bad habits to work off. Eg, in such a scenario, no strafing is allowed, so everyone has a clear line of fire. When engaging, push forward walking, and not running. It's all about concentrating fire as we sweep the floors. A couple of lashers wouldn't hurt either, for suppression.

One problem is when the armour on the ground realises what's happening, and bring their guns to bear on the tower. The precision of the galaxy drops is another. No time must be wasted, so we need our crack gal pilots for this.

Nevertheless, I'd love to train for this. I think we should give it a go. Even as a way to tighten up our tactical play, I say it's worth it.

I definitely like the look of the plan, with one significant caveat. During a hardmode raid, you still know, almost into the fine details, what you'll be facing ahead of time. Even with the sharply delineated objectives, etc., if just one Gal encounters ESFs en route, or one drop is missed by the width of a pubic hair, the whole plan goes to hell. On the other hand, I think it could serve as a significant and effective distraction to the defenders - it might perhaps give the friendly zerg time to bum-rush the bridge, or something of the like.

What I think the Crown highlights, however, (and I've mentioned this before) is the need for an ordnance system of some sort, whether that be orbital strikes, fixed (capturable) artillery bases, or squad-bound mobile pieces. This game aims, on many levels, to be a full-scale sci-fi warfare sim, and the lacking system of heavy ordnance is where it fails oh-so-hard.

In the real world, no army occupies an entrenched position unpunished. The position may be so well-entrenched that losses from indirect enemy fire are minimal, but regardless, if any enemy force of the relative size of the one that usually camps the crown entrenches itself, in reality, the first option isn't to bum-rush it with tanks, or infantry, or air-drop MAXes. The first, second and third through second-to-last options is to rain fire, death, and whistling steel on them from well out of range until they're either insane, or dead, or insanely dead, and then mop up the sorry survivors with combined arms.

Instead, what happens in the game is that certain points on the map turn into a reenactment of the Battle of Verdun, except somehow even more pointless in its slaughter, because massed defenders in geographically advantageous positions can't be punished for sitting still (IN THE OPEN) and shooting for an eternity, and dislodging them isn't even in the picture. Defending the Crown against overwhelming numbers is fun because the odds are stacked completely in the defenders favour, and they shouldn't be.

So I say, if the TR or NC want to camp the Crown, let them. In fact, I even say we give them, and all other large bases, trench networks to dig into. But I want any idiot zerg dumb enough to get caught in the open for more than a matter of minutes to be not just hit by, nor buried in, ordnance. I want them vaporized with ruthless, uncaring abandon; to be shelled so vigorously that their bodies and tanks are reduced to particulate matter. That's what happens when modern armies get caught in the open for too long, and it's what ought to happen in Planetside as well.

I see a few potential issues with the plan. The first one is the drop. There's usually a fuckton of AA at the crown, whether it's bursters or annihilator squads. So getting the gals through to the dropzone might be difficult, but that could be easily alleviated by sending four decoy gals ahead. Another issue is that the landing pads aren't a good spot--attackers can come from pretty much anywhere, and air can easily divebomb onto them. I'd say that we'd all need to be off the pad within 60 secs of the drop. The second issue is the biggest one. Failing to get a sundy deployed is probably what lets most attack fail. Getting a sundy up there requires either a LOT of sundies coming up at the same time, or that the whole garage/tower is heavy/turret/tank free. having 3 mags on the crossroads hill should keep the garage area tank free, but it also means that less people would be in the actual attack squad. as for the sundy ... really not sure. maybe driving one up at the northern hill would work until we have the whole ground area secured?

That being said, i'd love to see us pull something like off. It requires coordination, but it should be a lot of fun. It'd probably be good to partner with at least one other outfit for roles like mag shelling and sundy driving though, as i'd guess that we need a full platoon up at the tower.

There are sub-elements of this plan that could be honed on other bases, and would be really valuable to practice for building general group cohesion.

I posted about it before, but it bears repeating that the night a few weeks back where Cortosis led us on periodic training gal runs at one of the outbuildings at the crown, just to see how long we could hold it for before TR overran us, was great fun and felt like it made the platoon a lot tighter in the fights in between.

I think more training for stuff like this - fixed battleplan practice, challenge runs with no great strategic objective etc. - from time to time would make us a much more effective unit quite quickly.

The only with any plan that involves the crown/skydocks etc is that the defenders will be able to spawn faster than you kill them. So no matter if you clear the tower in a massive coordinated strike, a few seconds later you will have every single person you killed running inside or even spawning inside. This is one of the reasons why fighting at Indar is often pointless now and why bases really must have something that either slows down defender spawns or can make the defenders run out of spawns because no matter how well you do at the crown with such a drop the crown have a pretty tough to camp spawn room, especially since its so hard to get tanks up there. Which is why i have been trying to suggest spawn timers based on influence or some sort of ticket system for ages. Capping the crown should be done by cutting them off and letting them bleed dry.

Otherwise it does look like a rather solid plan even if dropping on the air pads might not be the best idea, i would prefer dropping in the building area so we can secure a foothold and force the defenders to turn to us while vehicles drive up.

Hey guys, I'm also one of the NC lot but I love the idea of such a tight strike on the Crown. I see one big issue with the plan being the armour that is ALWAYS present on the crown, it's full of Lightings and MBT's with AI rounds and all they need to do is turn and shell the crap out of the tower and it's just a matter of time. Maybe the best time to do this would be with a second friendly platoon pushing hard on the bridge to distract and draw away the armour?